Paoluzzi, MatteoAngelani, LucaGosti, GiorgioMarchetti, M. CristinaPagonabarraga, IgnacioRuocco, Giancarlo2021-11-062021-11-062021-11-062021-10-1410.1103/PhysRevE.104.044606https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/182894WOS:000708112300002Experimental evidence shows that there is a feedback between cell shape and cell motion. How this feedback impacts the collective behavior of dense cell monolayers remains an open question. We investigate the effect of a feedback that tends to align the cell crawling direction with cell elongation in a biological tissue model. We find that the alignment interaction promotes nematic patterns in the fluid phase that eventually undergo a nonequilibrium phase transition into a quasihexagonal solid. Meanwhile, highly asymmetric cells do not undergo the liquid-to-solid transition for any value of the alignment coupling. In this regime, the dynamics of cell centers and shape fluctuation show features typical of glassy systems.Physics, Fluids & PlasmasPhysics, MathematicalPhysicscell-migrationdynamicsmechanicsmotilitymodeltext::journal::journal article::research article